WASHINGTON  John Roberts' legal career includes a stint at the Justice Department as principal deputy solicitor general during the administration of President Bush's father, 13 years in private practice and two years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

He is being called a careful judge who made his mark as a brilliant lawyer, applauded for his strong oral arguments on behalf of the federal government and private clients.

If he's confirmed to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, he won't have clients. Instead of putting aside his own opinions to represent others, he'll be speaking only for himself and as one of nine voices on the nation's court of last resort.

And that raises questions, among the U.S. senators who will vote on his nomination and among a host of special interest organizations: Does John Roberts have an ideology or an agenda? Is he as conservative as his résumé (Republican official, former clerk to William Rehnquist, member of the Federalist Society) might suggest? Would he be a decisive vote either way on abortion rights or affirmative action or the line between church and state? Cases on all those issues have been decided by a single vote in recent years — and that single vote has been O'Connor's.

For the past two years, Roberts has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., but he has handed down few rulings on hot-button issues.

"That makes the (Senate confirmation) hearings all the more important," says Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe. "He doesn't have a long history of writings," as had Robert Bork, the former appeals court judge rejected for the high court in 1987.

"His appearance of decency and friendliness is real. I do think that his substantive philosophy, as much as I see it expressed, raises questions that require exploration."

While Tribe emphasizes the need to learn Roberts' views, he says the nominee does not appear to be a crusader. "I don't think John Roberts is putting on a gladiator suit as he marches toward the court," says Tribe who was on the opposite side of Roberts in an abortion-related case in 1991, when Roberts was principal deputy solicitor general. The government won.

Former White House counsel Fred Fielding, for whom Roberts worked in the early 1980s during the Reagan administration, says Roberts is what he appears to be and not a stealth ideologue. Fielding and other former associates characterize Roberts, who graduated with honors from Harvard College and Harvard Law, as a deliberate, studious lawyer.

"You're getting a wonderful intellect, a student of the law who holds the law in high respect," Fielding says. He says Roberts would bring no agenda to the bench. "That would be so totally inconsistent with his makeup," Fielding says. "He's such a straight-shooter. He has a wicked sense of humor, too."

A contrast to newest justices

Since he joined the appeals court two years ago, the opinions he has written have not revealed much about his legal philosophy.

Roberts on abortion

Though nominee John Roberts' quote on Roe v. Wade being wrongly decided, other statements give further clues to his stance on abortion:

"The statement in the brief was my position as an advocate for a client." — Roberts, explaining the brief during his 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to a federal appeals court.

"Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. It's a little more than settled. It was reaffirmed in the face of a challenge that it should be overruled in the Casey decision. Accordingly, it's the settled law of the land. There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent, as well as Casey." — Roberts, during the confirmation hearing, when asked for his own views on Roe v. Wade.

"I don't think it's appropriate for me to criticize it as judicial activism. ... My definition of judicial activism is when the court departs from applying the rule of law and undertakes legislative or executive decisions." — Roberts, during the confirmation hearing, on whether Roe v. Wade was judicial activism.

Roberts is a contrast to the two newest justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, who had hundreds of lower-court rulings and numerous law review articles to their credit when they were nominated. Before them, Clarence Thomas had a slew of public speeches and writings that clued senators into his judicial approach.

Carter Phillips, a Washington lawyer who crossed paths with Roberts as a Supreme Court advocate and who argues often before the D.C. Circuit, says Roberts has a gentle demeanor on the bench that contrasts with his aggressive manner as a litigator. "He's been more aggressive as an advocate on one side of the podium than he has been on the other side as a judge."

Phillips says Roberts has kept his views close to the vest: "He's not one of those people who waxes eloquently about his beliefs."

When Roberts appeared before senators two years ago in confirmation hearings for the D.C. Circuit post, he presented himself as a lawyer who would keep his private opinions in check.

"When you talk about the ability to set aside personal views and apply precedent without regard to personal ideology or personal views, that's something I've been able to do in my practice," he said.

Roberts was questioned closely about a brief he co-wrote while working in the first Bush administration in which he argued for the reversal of Roe v. Wade. He said he considered the 1973 landmark ruling that made abortion legal nationwide a "binding precedent."

Tribe says he does not find either stance Roberts took on the issue truly revealing of how he might rule on abortion cases as a justice. His early opposition to the Roe decision "was entirely appropriate for his lawyerly role" representing the first Bush administration, Tribe says. On his later Senate testimony regarding the ruling as settled law, Tribe points out that a lower court judge or lawyer really has no other option but to respect the precedent set by the high court.

But those who favor abortion rights say they fear the worst.

"Everything we know about Judge Roberts' record indicates that he will be a solid vote against women's rights and Roe v. Wade," says Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "If he is to be confirmed by senators who support women's rights, he must say where he stands on Roe and the right to privacy. The burden is on him."

At his 2003 confirmation hearing, Roberts also said, "I'd have to say that I don't have an overarching, guiding way of reading the Constitution. I think different approaches are appropriate in different types of constitutional provisions." He stressed that he would follow precedent. "I'm going to follow both the decisions I agree with and the decisions that I don't agree with, regardless of any personal view."

Supreme Court justices, however, have far more latitude to overturn or modify previous rulings. The justices, collectively, are the final arbiters of what the Constitution says.

In that hearing, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., noted, "President Bush ran on a platform of selecting judges who will be like Justice (Antonin) Scalia and Justice Thomas. We all understand that meant judges who will be activists in reducing the power of Congress to protect people's rights. What can you tell us, which will reassure us, that you will not necessarily follow (their) lead?"

Roberts' answer: "Well, I will follow the lead of the Supreme Court majority in any precedents that are applicable there. And if Justices Scalia and Thomas are in dissent in those cases, I am not going to follow the dissent. I'm going to follow the majority."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, noted during the hearings that Roberts was first nominated to that appellate court in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, but the Senate took no action. "So basically it has taken you 11 years to get to this particular position," Hatch said.

"Well, I like to think I haven't been just treading water in the meantime," Roberts quipped.

Roberts stressed that he has had both liberal and conservative clients — and represented both liberal and conservative positions — throughout his career.

'He could really read the bench'

As a judge the past two years, he has written about 40 opinions for the majority on the D.C. Circuit. Most have involved technical government regulatory matters that can have considerable impact on business, consumers and the environment.

On other issues

Some of Roberts' stands on issues that come before the Supreme Court besides abortion:

RELIGION: Roberts unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to rule that public schools could sponsor prayer at graduation ceremonies. "We do not believe ... that graduation ceremonies pose a risk of coercion," said the brief Roberts helped to write on behalf of the first Bush administration.

ENVIRONMENT: As a judge, he was sympathetic to arguments that wildlife regulations were unconstitutional as applied to a California construction project. The government feared the project would hurt arroyo toads.

CRIMINAL MATTERS: His votes on the bench have been mixed. He ruled in favor of a man who challenged his sentence for fraud, then said police did not violate the constitutional rights of a 12-year-old girl who was arrested, handcuffed and detained for eating a single french fry inside a Metro station in Washington.

POLICE SEARCHES: Joined an appeals court ruling in 2004 that upheld police trunk searches, even if officers do not say they are looking for evidence of a crime.

MILITARY TRIBUNALS: Roberts was part of a unanimous decision last week that allowed the Pentagon to proceed with plans to use military tribunals to try terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.

In a high-profile case Friday, Roberts was one of three judges who ruled unanimously that the Bush administration could resume military tribunals for foreign terrorism suspects held at a U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The case was brought by Salim Hamdan, an admitted Osama Bin Laden bodyguard and driver, one of four detainees charged with war crimes. In that ruling, Roberts joined an opinion that stressed deference to the president at wartime.

In between government service, Roberts did two stints at Hogan & Hartson, an elite Washington law firm with an A-list of corporate clients. After leaving the U.S. solicitor general's office in 1993, he led the firm's Supreme Court practice and argued many cases himself. He left in May 2003 to join the D.C. Circuit.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, watched Roberts argue four cases in 1994 and 1995 while Yoo clerked for Justice Thomas. Roberts' written briefs and his oral arguments "just stood out," Yoo recalls. "All the clerks knew about him and wanted to watch him argue. He was great technically on the law, just very precise and easy to follow. It was the same with his briefs."

Roberts was especially adept, another clerk recalls, at understanding whether his oral arguments were succeeding and making adjustments on the fly. "He could really read the bench," says Thomas Lee, a Fordham Univerity law professor who was a clerk for Justice David Souter in 2001-02. "He wouldn't ride a losing horse. ... That's certainly not true of every (lawyer) who comes to the court."

Roberts represented media mogul Rupert Murdoch against federal regulators who attempted to limit Murdoch's ownership of media companies. And he filed a brief before the Supreme Court on behalf of a trade organization that challenged a federal government program giving preference in contracting to companies owned by "socially or economically disadvantaged" persons.

But Roberts' client list held some surprises. In a case decided in 2002, Roberts argued that local government should be able to halt development in the Lake Tahoe Basin area while studying its impact. Opponents argued that the Constitution's "takings" clause required property owners to be compensated. Roberts' side won the case on 6-3 vote. The three most conservative justices, Scalia, Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, voted against him.

"Everyone is wondering where Roberts, as a conservative, is going to line up," says Lee, the former Souter clerk. "As a centrist myself, I see plenty of reason to hope that like Souter, he'll be something of a centrist, too."

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.